dertaken either to take away, or to confer, a taxing power; nor to
enlarge, or to restrain it; if it were to do either, I hardly know which
of the two would be the least excusable.

I beg leave to repeat, Mr. President, that what I have now been
considering are the President's objections, not to the policy or
expediency, but to the constitutionality, of the bank; and not to the
constitutionality of any new or proposed bank, but of the bank as it now
is, and as it has long existed. If the President had declined to approve
this bill because he thought the original charter unwisely granted, and
the bank, in point of policy and expediency, objectionable or
mischievous, and in that view only had suggested the reasons now urged
by him, his argument, however inconclusive, would have been
intelligible, and not, in its whole frame and scope, inconsistent with
all well-established first principles. His rejection of the bill, in
that case, would have been, no doubt, an extraordinary exercise of
power; but it would have been, nevertheless, the exercise of a power
belonging to his office, and trusted by the Constitution to his
discretion. But when he puts forth an array of arguments such as the
message employs, not against the expediency of the bank, but against its
constitutional existence, he confounds all distinctions, mixes questions
of policy and questions of right together, and turns all constitutional
restraints into mere matters of opinion. As far as its power extends,
either in its direct effects or as a precedent, the message not only
unsettles every thing which has been settled under the Constitution, but
would show, also, that the Constitution itself is utterly incapable of
any fixed construction or definite interpretation, and that there is no
possibility of establishing, by its authority, any practical limitations
on the powers of the respective branches of the government.

When the message denies, as it does, the authority of the Supreme Court
to decide on constitutional questions, it effects, so far as the opinion
of the President and his authority can effect it, a complete change in
our government. It does two things: first, it converts constitutional
limitations of power into mere matters of opinion, and then it strikes
the judicial department, as an efficient department, out of our system.
But the message by no means stops even at this point. Having denied to
Congress the authority of judging what powers may be co